Category Archives: Miscellany

The first bird I searched for was the nightjar, which used to nest in the valley. Its song is like the sound of a stream of wine spilling from a height into a deep and booming cask. It is an odorous sound, with a bouquet that rises to the quiet sky. In the glare of […]

Wherever we look in nature we are confronted with the sweetness and charms of music. Even in inanimate life we see, feel, and hear evidences of it: the whistling wind as it moves through the trees and rings out its melodies: the musical rhythm of the oceans, rivers, and streams as they perform their proper […]

Black birds break the stillness with a rackety bray, and the wind squalls through the timbers with a chilling drone… It emanates from deep within the woods. Some say it’s the sound of cicadas, but everyone knows they sing in the key of C#. After checking on my harmonica, I put this somewhere between B […]

We are very bad at scale. The things that live in the soil are too small to care about; climate change too large to imagine. We are bad at time, too. We cannot remember what lived here before we did; we cannot love what is not. Nor can we imagine what will be different when […]

What appeals to us in being near to nature is nature’s music, and nature’s music is more perfect than that of art. It gives us a sense of exaltation to be moving about in the woods, to be looking at the green, to be standing neat the running water which has it’s rhythm, its tone […]